Written By:
Date Posted: August 5, 2002

    When VCR's and Tape players first came out, one of the first things that people wanted was a way to make their own copies of either a tape or a video.   When CD's first came out one of the things people were wondering was when they would be able to write to CD's.  The first CD writers that came out were SCSI devices and also, as DVD-R's are now, were expensive for a slow 1X CDR.  The first IDE CDRW that I purchased was an Acer 2X2X6 writer that managed to be rather fussy with burning both R's and RW's almost right from the day I bought it.  Since those 'dark' days, prices for CDRW's have come down while the speeds have continued to increase.

    MSI is a relatively new player in the CD-RW market.  They have started to diversify from their established motherboard business, into video cards and even CDR's, one of which we are looking at today.  The first CD-RW from MSI was released in early/mid 2001 and was the MS-8312, a 12X8X32 CD-RW.  Since then MSI has increased the speed of their CDRW's in an almost sequential sequence from 12X to 40X, for the CD-R writing speed.

The Box and Drive

    So what does this drive look like?  Are there any interesting features that make this burner different from the rest?  First lets see what comes with the burner, and what the retail box looks like.

    In a simplified list here is what you get in the box, besides the CDRW:

• Nero Burning ROM version 5.5.7.1 CD and Ahead InCD 3.2.2
• DOS driver disk
• 1 Blank 650MB CD-RW disk
• 1 Blank 700MB CD-R disk
• Nero Burning ROM Manual (seven languages)
• MSI CD-RW drive installation manual (also in seven languages)
• A CD Audio cable
• Pack of screws

    One of the things noticeably absent from the box was an IDE cable, while it wasn't really a problem in my case, it still would be a good idea for MSI to include a cable in the package, as it wouldn't cost very much. 

Next Page - The Drive